Photographer and samurai aficionado Viktor is living with his mother in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 20 miles from the Russian border, when the invasion commences. Viktor is also deaf, which relegates his military ambitions to documenting war instead of fighting in one. The film’s director, Olivier Sarbil, can relate, having been a war photographer with impaired hearing, and a tangible sense of empathy emerges in the film’s formal choices. A singularly expressive sound design and close-up photography in stark black and white create immediacy and bring a bold aesthetic to the fearful and fearsome scenes of air raids, evacuations, and the haunting silences in between. As Viktor makes images of intrepid soldiers and shocked civilians, the film becomes a portrait of his valiant engagement with a war-torn world and being a warrior in ways he had only imagined.  TM